Closed Eyes
by Extraordinary Invisible Lights
Summary: Toni, through the years, grew bitter and angry at the world. She's been through too much for a girl to handle. She regretted too much and in return, drank too much. But that was her. That was Antonia Stark. Fem!Tony.


Antonia Ella Stark has always been the most difficult person to be around. Just ask Peter Potts, he'd probably already written a whole book of the inventor's quirks and attitudes, some not necessarily good. Drinking, not sleeping and eating unless forced was included in a small section of it and it involved a lot of frowny faces because Toni herself would have stolen it in the middle of the night and would have added, 'please, help me, I'm being eaten by a banana,' in between every fifth sentence.

But, of course, behind every fucked up person, there's a past that was the cause of every single reckless maneuver and throat-cut reply, a process that turns an innocent kid into a ruthless businesswoman that is Toni Stark. So Toni definitely had a reason to be who she is and she already knows how much of a fuck up her whole existence is, she doesn't need anyone repeating everything she thinks to herself when she sees a mirror, _thank you very much. _

Toni as a five year old would wake up to glass in the middle of the night, most likely a wine bottle, smashing towards something. Sometimes it was her mother, sometimes it was the wall or the floor, and sometimes it was Toni herself. If Toni gained a few deep cuts around her back, she says absolutely nothing about it when she sees her father the following day on the couch with a beer bottle in his hand and his eyes closed. She never did try to stop the habit of kissing his forehead on the way to school until her mid-teens.

Toni as a nine year old found out about kissing through her father's business partner one night when her father decided to pass out. She was confused, and his hands started to wander. She was completely frozen until Jarvis, the butler, cut in with a blank expression that barely masked his utter horror. The man was sent away to jail almost immediately and when the news got out, the company the man owned went downhill. Toni just couldn't help but feel it was still her fault.

Toni as a thirteen year old had already made her version of a high-tech toaster through the pieces of an old, broken one. She had been excited to show her father, jumping around and hugging the toaster, which beeped and whirred as if it was as excited as she was. When he came back home, she had all but lunged at him with the goal to hug him, only to have him growl at her and tell Jarvis to take her to her room. She had tearfully told him of her new creation, her bottom lip quivering, but he wasn't listening. He was too busy mumbling something about a man with blond hair and blue eyes, which prompted Toni to ask. That was the day she found out about Steve Rogers also known as Captain America, the reason why her father always went out really early and came home drunk. He was looking for the blue eyed saint, and Toni couldn't help but dream of the man who her father seemed to desperate to find.

When Toni finally turned fifteen, she got accepted to MIT. At that age, she finally learned that looking for even a hint of a smile of approval from her father was completely futile. She silently felt humiliated for all the years she had spent her childhood to impress him, feeling like she had been fooled completely. MIT was where she started building a defense mechanism. She gathered facts, things that would affect the people around her and would gauge everyone's reaction through every movement. She almost wanted to write it all on paper, from '_a smile is a woman's weapon' _to '_you should bite before people bark', _but it had all ended up being engrained into her head so much that she doesn't even bother. Suddenly, it became a habit. The words flowing easily from her mouth, her mouth stained with a smile that was sugary and edged with danger and her head still managing to go through schematics and numbers for a project she will most likely do behind the enclosed doors of her workshop.

At seventeen, Toni had already been known as the heiress who came through clubs and bars with five thousand bucks in her purse with a condom or two shoved in between bills. Her father hadn't reacted at all and her mother just gave up trying to get out of the master's bedroom, which her father never entered anymore. She started getting more reckless, pushing harder just for a glance from either parent. When she received none, she drank herself into oblivion.

When she became eighteen, she had Obie breathing down her neck with more attention than both of her parents could combine. She was unfamiliar with it, the attention, and was both scared and thrilled by it. He was more of a father figure than Howard ever was, and quite frankly, she preferred his presence over Howard.

At nineteen, she had finally graduated from MIT with grades that were so through the roof that some of the professors either wanted to gape at her or strangle her for her personality. She was well-known for her sharp tongue and had also been known to use it against everyone, which definitely included policemen who had arrested her one night in the bar and the principal. Needless to say, her weirdly young Physics professor is the only person in the whole campus who either doesn't want to murder her in her sleep or fuck her senseless. He seemed to be the only person who looked through her defense mechanism. And when he mentioned it one time during one of their many sessions of Toni showing him her projects and him correcting things she would have overlooked because she was pretty careless, she had promptly stood up and walked out with all of her things and never talked to him like she used to.

When she was finally twenty one, she had been partying in a club, talking to a blond—she mildly tried to remember whether they were female or male before promptly deciding that she didn't give a flying fuck, and had come home to an empty house. She had looked through the bedrooms and the labs and found no one was home except for Jarvis. She shrugged it off, and went to bed, only to be woken up the next morning with the news of her parents death shoved in her face by a policeman that looked awfully familiar. She soon inherited the company with Obie being the only comfort she could find.

When Toni became twenty six, she was considerably tamer, what with being so busy being the CEO of the company. She was run to the ground with work and almost considered making a missile just to blow up the board's meeting room. Then, on a particularly shitty day, she had come across the strawberry blond male named Peter Potts and had generally slapped him with her words, which he had surprisingly replied with just as much ease with a smile that was fake but polite. For a beat, she just stared at him, her face unreadable before she snapped her fingers at someone and shouted behind her back as she walked away, "Peter Potts, you're my new executive assistant." She paused and looked around the man's office before flashing him a smirk, "Now you can have a less shitty office."

When she turned thirty, she went to showcase her new missiles, her hand cupped around a glass of scotch while the soldiers beside her eyed her with weariness in their eyes. Soon, she started cracking jokes, astounding the soldiers with her charisma. She was about to let them take a picture with her, with her making a sideline remark on the soldier's, Jimmy she decided to note, hand up in a peace sign. Then the vehicle in front of them blew up and the soldiers around her decided to leave her alone to help, with Jimmy being left behind with a shout. Then he left too and Toni couldn't help but scream his name, knowing that he might not live if he left. She had jumped out of the vehicle she was in, running to take cover behind a rock as she took out her phone to send a distress call. A missile exploded to the ground five feet from her and she couldn't help but stare at the name plastered to the side. _Stark Industries, _it had said. Her eyes widened before she stumbled back at the same time as the missile exploding completely. She flew back, slamming onto the ground with a gasp, feeling a stabbing pain in her chest area as she ripped open her polo shirt and stared down at her bleeding chest. And everything became black.

She went through hazes of pain, remembers someone screaming and sobbing for them to stop, and when she breathes in and feels the ache in her throat she realizes that it was her who was screaming and ends up finding that she couldn't stop. She passed out again and couldn't remember any of what had happened except for flashes of images and the memory of her face being shoved into a body of water multiple times. She remembers gasping for air, sobbing out words that were too garbled to be understood. She blinked, eyeing the dark room around her before turning her head to find a man shaving in front of a mirror. He was kind and indifferent to her reactions and her sharp tongue, and it wasn't long before she was fond enough to call him her friend, which Toni didn't really have a lot of.

When he stared at her as he tried to finish putting the suit on her, she had seen the way his eyes moved towards the entrance and couldn't help but remind him, '_We stick to the plan, alright?' _and he only looked at her again with the sort of expression she could never forget. He ran towards the entrance, picking up a machine gun and shot at the walls so that that men running towards them would back away and Toni couldn't help but shout at him to come back before controlling her spiraling emotions to finish the job. Soon enough, she was walking around with heavy thuds, the bullets barely even grazing the suit. She had them all done for and all she had in mind was the man who was gasping for air on the floor. She shot at the man, name forgotten but face burning forever in the corners of her mind. She knelt down before Yinsen, lifting her faceplate to talk to him, to tell him that they needed to get out of here. He responded with words her brain couldn't even comprehend, her eyes tearing up as she let him breathe his last breathe.

Then she was found and everything was falling back into place, with Peter looking at her with those eyes and her smiling at him with two requests, "First of all, I want a real American cheeseburger." She had said as she slipped into the car, "Second, I want a press conference." God, she was hungry. She was straight on stopping the production of weapons in her company and it wasn't long before everyone around her thought she was crazy. And when she received a call from Peter and was just about to pick it up when she felt her breathing stop and her heart stutter. She paled, frozen as a hand steadied her to pillow it onto her couch.

She saw Obie and couldn't help but stare with betrayed eyes, tears gathering around her eyes as she watched him talk and found him pulling the arc reactor out of her chest with a gasp. He commented on the beauty of her creation before walking out with her staring at nothing, trying to breathe as steadily as she could and finding that the ability to even scream at the pain in her chest was gone from her grasp.

She had crawled and stumbled towards the old arc reactor she had owned, losing the strength to even keep her own body standing upright as she felt for it, reaching for it before she leaned against the desk as she slid to the ground, thinking to herself, _this is it, this is how I die. This is the end of Toni Stark._ And then she looks up to find Butterfingers handing her the arc reactor, whirring before let herself smile at him, whispering a show of approval. Rhodey finally barreled through the doors before seeing her curled up on the floor, pulling her into a sitting position as she began to regulate her breathing. She finally stood up, determination in her eyes. And on the same night, she had killed the only father figure she had ever had and couldn't help but feel angry that she felt no remorse over it.

And at the age of thirty three, she was told by a pirate who was ironically black that she was being considered to be part of the Avengers while the palladium in her heart threatened to kill her before a crazy lady with a great ass and chest stabbed her with an injection that was supposed to delay the effects. Toni couldn't help but sigh in relief after they had explained that—no; they weren't going to kidnap her. Being kidnapped once was more than enough for two generations, and she's not keen on adding a second time.

At age thirty five, she finds a new element through her dad and couldn't help the tears that brought to her eyes as she finished the last of the tape. So she set to work, hoping to stop the weight on her chest from building up like it usually did before she decided to come down to dinner with Peter Potts to tell him that he was the new CEO of the company, congratulations and all that.

And now, at the age of thirty seven, she finds and later meets a man named Steve Rogers who had just been woken up. A name she had already engrained in her head as the name of a perfect person. She was not proven wrong and she couldn't help but be bitter that the man who had stolen her childhood came out of the ice pristine, pretty and completely innocent, like some Disney character with abs of steel. Every movement she saw him do irked her enough to want to install bad words into every door Toni could possibly predict he would open just to see his reaction. And then she finds out that she is solidly included in the Avengers and soon meets the few people she couldn't help but stare at. A god. A god was near her and he has long flowing golden hair and she couldn't help but stare at the redheaded agent near her too and think, _good god, I'm surrounded by Disney characters. _

And then she sees Bruce and feels the urge to hug the man and kidnap him and never let him out of her sight. She could almost see them flying through theories in that speed of theirs and couldn't help but feel desperate for that kind of companionship, for someone who was on the same wavelength. And best of all, _wasn't a Disney character._ And suddenly she remembers, oh right, I'm here to track down the nearby blond god's brother. Oops. She soon does and finds herself staring him down with his scepter tapping against her arc reactor and when nothing happens, he stares at her and says something so mundane, she would have cackled in his face if not for the seriousness of the situation. He threw her out of the building and soon she was flying head first into the ground, spreading out her legs and arms so that the Mark VII could properly latch itself onto her.

And when she finally has her arms around the missile, pushing it up and directing it up the gaping hole that is the portal to outer space, she gulps, letting JARVIS, the AI she had named after the butler who raised as if he himself was her father, call Peter and soon closed her eyes as the call failed to reach the strawberry blond man who was watching the same battle through the television with anxious eyes.

Bits of people's faces flashed through her mind, the people who she was so ready to buy a whole country for. Yinsen and his ability to welcome death with a smile, her father, Howard, with his wine bottles and the rare moments where he stops drinking and starts talking about his life way back when, Peter with his smile and quick replies, Rhodey with his dry sense of humor and his grin, Bruce and his shy, unsure smile, Natasha and her scarily blank and professional pokerface, Agent Coulson and his bloodied trading cards, and Captain America, with his blindingly beautiful smile and adorably annoying confused face, and finds that she couldn't bring it in herself to regret any of that as she went spiraling down to the ground head first.


End file.
